Another Tuesday Bullet Point List

• I have six back-to-back meetings with students this morning. At this point in the term, there are a few minutes in between meetings. That's enough time to type a sentence or two, but unfortunately, not enough time to get coffee. I have had no coffee yet this morning. I'm having problems putting words together to form sentences. In my most recent meeting, I gave the following advice to a student: "Read the article with an eye toward possible subtopics for your paper because you might find some topics that will make interesting . . . subtopics for your paper."

• Bloggity pedagogy. Exhibit A:

34. Every time Emily checks her favorite weblog, she sees that the author has updated it with a new post. Suddenly, the author stops posting entries on the weblog. What is likely to happen to Emily’s behavior of checking the weblog?
a. She will continue to check the weblog for updates at the same rate she had before.
b. She will immediately stop checking the weblog for updates.
c. She will increase the checking behavior for a while, but her checking behavior will decline eventually.
d. She will show a steady increase in her checking behavior over time.

• I have run out of grapefruit. :(

• I have a student who wrote on her introductory 3 X 5 notecard, "I smile all the time." I thought, "That's nice." Then I realized that she smiles all the time because that's how her face is. It's a little unsettling.

• It's now almost 11:30, and I still haven't had any coffee.

• I just found out from a newsletter that I'm giving a talk this weekend at a mother-daughter luncheon. Good to know.

*The answer to #34 is (c). If an organism is rewarded on a continuous schedule of reinforcement, extinction trials will result in an initial dramatic increase in the frequency of the behavior (extinction burst), followed by a decline in the frequency of the behavior (extinction).